Condi Rice Could’ve Written Biden’s Speec

Jim Lobe at Lobelog.com writes:

I hate to agree with Bill Kristol, but he’s right about Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at the ongoing Munich security conference when he writes that “the administration chose not to use the occasion to say something interesting. One hopes the Obama administration is actually thinking more seriously than the Biden speech indicates.” I’m sure Kristol and I were looking for different things in the speech, but, at least from my point of view, it was hopelessly uninspired and offered no hints of any creative and new thinking that might actually lead to breakthroughs, particularly in the Middle East. Indeed, it sounded like a speech that Condoleezza Rice might have submitted in draft for White House approval before the vice president’s office and Elliott Abrams got their hands on it. Remember, this was the Obama administration’s first major foreign-policy address and thus a huge opportunity to begin charting its own path.

A few things were especially disappointing, beginning with the emphasis placed by Biden on the change of “tone” the new administration would bring to foreign policy. (This was exactly what Rice meant when she announced in her Senate confirmation hearings in 2005 that “the time for diplomacy is now.”) It’s nice to have a new “tone”, but what about some new content beyond the nominal gestures, like closing Guantanamo and forbidding torture, and the cliches about greater consultation and adherence to international law? In that respect, Biden offered little or nothing substantive.

I especially had problems with the way he spoke about Iran, mainly in the language of carrots and sticks that is so deeply resented in Tehran; to wit:

“We’ll be willing to talk to Iran and to offer a very clear choice: Continue down the current course and there will be continued pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and your support for terrorism, and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Note that we’re willing to talk “to” not “with” Iran “to offer them a very clear choice.” This is the language of ultimatum; it is not the language of “respect” that Obama promised in his Inaugural address and his interview with al-Arabiya’s Hisham Melham. The only thing that indicated “respect” was the condescending passage: “The Iranian people are a great people; the Persian civilization is a great civilization.” The Bush administration always made the same observation when its senior officials, including Bush himself, spoke about Iran.

All in all, I would guess hardliners in Tehran are very happy with Biden’s performance; it makes it much easier for them to argue that Obama represents no real change at all, at least change that Iranians can believe in.

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